Crofters Commission

Background

The Crofters Commission (CC) is the organisation in Scotland responsible for the development and regulation of crofting.  There are over 17,700 crofts with croft land covering 25% of the agricultural land area in the Highlands and Islands.

Problem

They have a small Geographic Information unit with limited software development capability. They have been tasked with making a range of their own and third party spatial data available across the organisation to a potentially large user base. They had already committed to purchasing ESRI ArcIMS software but were not clear on how to make best use of it with the resources available.

Solution

CC purchased IMF-ArcIMS Small Business Edition in April 2004. IMF together with ESRI ArcIMS software was installed by a GeoWise consultant in less than 1 day. Some limited training was carried out with Caroline Matheson their GIS Officer. Caroline comments, "after it was installed it took me less than a day to get comfortable with IMF and an intranet site working with our own data on it. I had no previous hands on experience of ArcIMS and very little knowledge of XML so the product really does do what it says on the box."

The application has been made available to all key staff primarily to give them access to data such as Ordnance Survey mapping, land ownership, protected sites, forestry, etc. In the longer term they are going to be developing a croft and grazings spatial dataset which will be used corporately as part of the core business. The intention is to deliver this on the intranet via IMF and ArcIMS.

Verdict

"I am really delighted with IMF and pleased that it really is as easy to set up a basic site as I was led to believe. The discussion group support via the moximedia website is also very useful." Caroline Matheson, GIS Officer, Crofters Commission.

Further information

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